Titans-Jaguars Postgame Quotes

Obviously, a very disappointing loss for us in a game where we had plenty of opportunities. Right from the beginning, with the turnover, we struggled all day to score points and had to settle for field goals when we could have done much better than that. When you do that in this league, it ends up costing you. We missed a field goal in there, too. We just missed way too many opportunities to put points on the board. It’s hard to take and obviously we just didn’t play well enough to win. We didn’t make enough plays to win this football game and that’s how it is in this league. We knew that coming down here. Like I said, we’re in a division where the records mean nothing. By no means did we take anything for granted. By no means did we take anyone lightly. We’re not good enough to do that. So we came down here and played hard, but we just didn’t make enough plays.

(on how badly the loss hurts the team’s chances to the playoffs)

I would say it’s a consequence of not playing well. Now you are where you are. That’s not the first thing that goes through you mind in a game like that. You want to win the football game and then you deal with your situation after the fact. We just came down here to win, but it didn’t work out. We weren’t guaranteed anything win or lose. Obviously we wanted to win, we knew we had to win and we didn’t win.

(on his team’s mistakes)

We dropped balls and didn’t get our feet down in bounds. It’s called making plays, and making the tough catch and getting your feet in bounds to keep drives going. And we didn’t do that today. We fought back, which was great to see. We had a nice drive to get right back in it after the defense gave up a touchdown. We got right back in it. The defense got off the field and we had a chance to go win the football game. If you’re going to be a good football team, that’s what you have to do. And we did not do that. All of the things that happened before then, we shouldn’t have been in that situation, but we were. But we answered when we were down nine and we scored. We got the ball right back with two-and-a-half minutes left in the game with great field position and we blew it. That’s what it came down to.

(on his decision to challenge the incompletion in the end zone)

We knew in this game there were not going to be a lot of camera angles and they were not going to show us the replays upstairs or on the sidelines. Because of that and he (Damian Williams) was comfortable he got it in, so we thought we had a shot at it. The other side of that was when we got to the line of scrimmage, we weren’t going to get the play off, so you have to call timeout anyway, so we might as well challenge the play. The official told me if they had called it a touchdown, he wouldn’t have overruled it. They couldn’t tell because of the shadow and the look they had, he couldn’t tell if he was in or out, so he had to go with how it was called on the field which was incomplete.

(on if he thought the team was flat)

The defense got the turnover on the second play of the game, that looked good. The defense got six or seven sacks: they looked pretty good there. They got a turnover. That didn’t look too flat. It’s about the best we’ve done all year. The point is that on offense we didn’t take advantage of the chances we had to score points. We had to go a long way at times. The field position battle was tough. We were down inside our own 20 quite a bit, so we had to go a long way. The thing was we made some nice plays to get down there, but we couldn’t seem to find a way to finish drives. When you do that as many times as we did today, you put yourself in a spot where if you make one mistake like we did at the end with the tipped ball for the interception, you’re going to lose the football game and that’s what happened.

(on if he thought the team underestimated the Jaguars)

No and I can’t imagine we would. I really don’t. We went through this last year with Indianapolis. This is a division game, and I really don’t think teams do that in this league. I think people look at that all the time if it’s a close game, but I don’t think people buy into the fact these teams are really close. This team (Jaguars) should have beaten Houston last week, a team people think are the best team in football at 10-1 or whatever they are. I think it just shows you better come ready to play every Sunday and when you have a chance to put points on the board, you better put them on.

TITANS QB JAKE LOCKER

(on tipped interception)

I have to take better care of the ball, that’s upon me. The defense did a good job getting us the ball back. We had a chance to go down the field and win it with a field goal at that point. The guy got his hand on it and picked it off.

(on coming off the bye)

I don’t think there was any lack of preparation. I don’t think guys came in here expecting just to walk out and win the game. We knew Jacksonville was a good football team. If you don’t think that, then you’re mistaken. And I don’t think our team prepared that way. I don’t think we came here with that mindset today. We just didn’t execute as well as we needed to win the game.”

(on converting third downs)

We came out and ran the ball well and thought we put ourselves in two third and short situations and wasn’t able to convert. I thought we did good on first and second down. We just weren’t able to convert on third down.

(on not scoring touchdowns)

We didn’t execute as we needed to when we had the opportunities.

(on losing close games)

That’s how close this league is, one or two games here and there. It’s pretty much like this in every division. There’s very little separation between those teams that make it and those that don’t. It’s what I touched on earlier. This team might be one and (nine) but you look at a lot of those games, they had some games they lost that were really close ball games and could have gone either way. And they just hadn’t gone their way so far this year.

TITANS RB CHRIS JOHNSON

(on coming away with field goals instead of touchdowns)

We basically didn’t execute the plays that were called for us. We got down there so many times and we didn’t execute. We let it get away from us early in the game. Any time you play a team like Jacksonville, a division game, it’s going to be a very tough game no matter what their record is.

(on playing a rival)

Even when a team is not winning, any time you give them some momentum and give them some belief, it’s going to be a pretty tough game. A team like that, you have to get on them early and we didn’t do that today. The only good thing about the whole situation is, we get a chance to redeem ourselves. They always play hard and are very tough against the run.

TITANS LB ZACH BROWN

(on defensive effort)

We just needed to make some plays and stop them. Number eighty-four (Cecil Shorts III) caught a pass and scored a touchdown. We need to tackle and get him to the ground, they don’t score. Maybe they kick a field goal at the most. We got to get them to the ground.

(on the loss)

We have to put it behind us and keep moving on. You can’t let this game affect you, and if you do, it will be a domino effect.

TITANS CB ALTERRAUN VERNER

(on interception on first drive)

Their guy got his hand on the ball and I was trying my hardest to get to the ball. I was fortunate enough to able to get to the ball before it hit the ground.

(on only getting a field goal off interception)

In my mind we got points out of it, three points, and it’s better than getting no points. I think I would have been more frustrated if we didn’t score at all. The defense helped us get the early lead.

(on the loss)

We had a chance with the playoffs and now it’s definitely out of our hands. I felt like we still had it under our control if we kept winning out. So it’s definitely frustrating because we still haven’t won a division game. We’re 0-3.

JAGUARS HEAD COACH MIKE MULARKEY

(opening statement)

I’m very proud of this team. I have been all along, that hasn’t changed. Today something good happened for them. Obviously we needed a win at home, needed something good for us to happen like that at the end of the game with the interception to win the game. We haven’t had that happen for us. Obviously we have a lot of work still to do. I just felt like we had a chance to have more production in every phase, and that has to come. But to get the win, win it at home and to get the fan support like we had and to hear that at the end, ‘We are, Jaguars,’ that was pretty impressive by our fans, and our players certainly appreciate the support. Like I just told the radio show I just did, it’s important that the fans know our players come in here every day and work their hearts out to win every Sunday for this city and this organization. It’s good to have something good happen for them. Really good.

(on the need for this victory)

Obviously you can tell. They needed that, a lot of people needed that. It was well earned, they earned it based on the way they come to work every day. We want to see steps, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, we want to see progress and again we’re seeing progress the last couple of weeks. We’ve got to keep doing that for the next five weeks.

(on how he feels after the win)

I feel very happy for our players. It’s not relief. I’m just happy that our players can feel good about all the time and effort that they put in and get a win, especially at home where we haven’t played as well as we have on the road. I don’t know what the reason for that is.

(on if Chad Henne is the reason why the offense has performed well the last two games)

Whatever you think. You write whatever you want to write on that. I can tell you this; we have a bunch of guys that come in, we’ve got guys that have made some plays, whether that’s because of Chad (Henne) or not, I don’t look at it the way you do. I look at it as a team that fought, scratched and found ways to win. Our special teams did a good job; that had nothing to do with Chad Henne. They played a very good special teams unit that’s good year in and year out with that coach that’s been there forever. They played extremely well. I’ll leave it at that.

(on Chad Henne’s play the last two games)

Chad’s played well the last two weeks. He’s made some throws. What I was impressed with today, there’s no way we should give up seven sacks to anybody. Cannot happen. He still stood in the pocket and stayed in there and made some throws when it really counted, to make some of the throws. We still had things where we had drops, where we have to quit dropping the ball. We’re trying to put a game out of reach, we have to catch some of these throws. That catch by Blackmon down in the tight red zone, that was a great catch down by his ankles. A great catch. Those are the kind of plays we have been failing to make from the beginning of the year and we made a couple of them.

(on last week’s positive game as a motivator)

I said to them after the game, that ‘We’ve shown what we’re capable of, now we need to show that we can,’ was the message to them. They saw the tape, they saw what we’re capable of, they’ve seen spurts of it all year long. Now they saw it for four quarters, so it was good.

(on what the team needs to improve on and what he liked from the team today)

Just based on watching the game the last three hours, there’s things I know we need to improve on, that have been going on since the beginning of the season. There’s also things that aren’t talked about or written about that are good, like the third downs on offense. That offense, our offense has struggled all year on third down, but we made a bunch. We put ourselves in a lot of third-and-ones, that’s what we have not done. We have work still to do. I just liked the energy on the sideline, if you guys watched, that whole team was that way from the start all the way to the end. This is a very close team, very close, and it’s evident every day they come into work. Very evident.

(on the importance of the offense, defense and special teams complementing each other)

Yes. Trying to score touchdowns, trying to score points. The one thing that’s important is all three phases have to complement each other. That’s just important. We’re going to go for it on offense, I trust that our defense is going to get a three-and-out. We’re going to block a field goal if we get into a situation where they kick a field goal. We need to be aggressive on offense to try to score points, and I told them that before the game started that was the case. We were going to go for some of those fourth downs.

(on the performance of the running backs)

A lot of that were hard-earned runs. I thought both of our guys, Jalen (Parmele) and Rashad (Jennings), ran hard. They made some of those yards when they weren’t there. We talked about last night how important it was to establish the run. We were going to try to do it, and I give credit to them (Tennessee). They did a good job of stuffing us up there. It’s not like we were moving the line of scrimmage like I thought we could. We have to be able to run the football here.

(on miscommunication)

We had some breakdowns there that we have to fix; miscommunication. Again, I have to look at all the plays, but some it was just (getting) beat one-on-one that we can’t have.

(on Rashad Jennings running with more purpose)

I can tell you this. No messages are being sent by me by putting players in that we’re seeing if we can be more productive to win games. None of our guys have taken it that way. They see that we’re just trying to do something to get us up and running, and he’s handled it extremely well. His role to go over to kick returns was big for us last week. Today he had to pick it up. When Jalen went down, I thought he ran very hard. Whatever that message was, he really ran hard.

(on what the defense did well)

Kept a lot of things in front of us. I thought we tackled for the most part. I can think of a handful of plays that, the long run at the end of the fourth quarter that they got to get to the touchdown, that was probably one of the worst plays we had tackling. Kept a lot of things in front of us. Coverage was good. We didn’t have breakdowns in a couple of the coverages we had against the Texans.

(on Cecil Shorts)

Well, Cecil just finds a way to make explosive plays. He’s made some big catches, and he has all year. I think he’s only scratched the surface of where Cecil can be. Blackmon, I’ve said it really now for six weeks, every week this guy is better because of the way he comes in and prepares. He runs everything fast in practice because he’s much more confident, he knows what he’s doing, it has gotten better every week.

(on if it takes a rookie a while to get to where he knows what he’s doing)

Some, and not everybody is the same so some guys are different than others. There’s definitely things there that you see why he had the production he had in college. He’s got that ability.

(on what he has seen from Justin Blackmon in practice all year and how it’s translating to games)

Yes, yes I do and I credit Jerry Sullivan (Jaguars wide receivers coach) a lot with it because of the little things it takes to be a great route runner, get open, angles, first steps, there’s just a lot of things that go into it and I credit him. And Justin he wants to learn like you hope rookies do and it’s showing up on the field.

JAGUARS QB CHAD HENNE

(on if he feels like he’s a better quarterback then when he was in Miami)

No, I feel like more of a experienced quarterback. I think you learn a lot about yourself especially in your first four years, so I’ve been through a lot. Really only had two years underneath my belt as a starter, so I’m still learning a lot of things about myself and working on things that I can improve on.

(on the importance of preparation)

I always felt my preparation and how I prepare for each game is most important. How I practice each and every week and carry myself on and off the field is really important for myself, but I’m not going to change who I am. Just coming into a new organization getting an opportunity like I have I’m going to be myself, provide some energy and leadership to this team.

(on Marcedes Lewis and the development of the young receivers)

I think overall if we have a linebacker or a safety that we feel that we have a better matchup with Marcedes (Lewis) on we’re going to try to get him involved a little bit more, and especially in the red zone you have to get the guy the ball. A six-foot-eight target down there you kind of just give him a chance and throw the ball up, but overall as a passing game I just really think the way we’re practicing we’re kind of applying what we do in practice and taking it over to the field. The young receivers understand their role on this offense. It’s tough coming in as a rookie for Justin (Blackmon) and Cecil (Shorts) last year. I don’t know how many opportunities he (Cecil Shorts) had but to get the offense underneath your belt and understand your role is crucial.

(on what he’s doing in the locker room to get the team going)

I think just provide leadership and energy. Some people might not think I’m a rah-rah guy, but I believe you just try to be that at practice especially the situation that we have but it’s not just me. There are a lot of resilient guys in this locker room and I’m really proud of what they’ve done and what they’ve gone through as a team, and I just want to help out as much as I can and hopefully these next five games we can go on a little roll here.

(on if he is doing anything different now that he’s the starter)

Well I think you look back and everyone wants to blame the quarterback and that wasn’t the case. Blaine (Gabbert) was playing some really good football and it wasn’t his fault. Obviously there are certain situations where yeah it’s the quarterback’s fault but we had a lot of things going on around us and it’s just going through your reads, making the throws that are out there and when plays present themselves make that play.

(on what the team has been doing to get better)

We’re just learning a lot about ourselves. I think the coaching staff understands what we can do with some protections. We’ve been really good with play action. If we can run the football like we showed today that only opens up gaps for us in the passing game so I think if you keep it a balanced attack that only helps you as an offense.

(on what he was thinking after his first pass of the game was intercepted)

Well it’s a good thing I’ve been in that situation I guess. In college against Notre Dame Brady Quinn threw a pick, I threw a pick-six on both of our first passes and that didn’t hinder what we did as an offense. We put up 49 points so you just go back to those experiences. It’s one play. You play one play at a time, have a singular focus, push that behind you and just go out and attack the offensive plan.

(on if he saw Justin Blackmon open when he threw the touchdown pass to Cecil Shorts)

Yeah I did see Justin as I came to the sideline and looked at the picture. With that defense the MIKE [middle linebacker] really kind of had a mental error where he was supposed to be deep, but that doesn’t take me off my read. I’ve just got to see the field a little bit better but both of those guys [Shorts and Blackmon] are designed for that coverage to get the ball.

(on what it means to the team to get a victory at home)

I just think hopefully this builds confidence for everybody throughout these next five games, builds new life. Last year in Miami I only had to go through four games and then I got put on IR, but it’s never easy. But like I said previously these guys are just tremendous guys. There’s no quit in anybody. The way we practice I’ve never seen it. You could just go in the dirt and not have fun. These guys have fun every week. They prepare like they want to be here and really care about this Jaguars team.

(on how being prepared prevents anxiety)

Sure there’s comfort but there’s also the way you prepare. Preparation I think takes away anxiety and the more you’re prepared and understand what you’re doing the calmer you can play.

(on the team building off this win and if they can go on a roll)

I hope so. Nobody ever wants to lose and obviously we only had one game against the Indianapolis Colts that we a victory so let’s build on two and see what we can do. Obviously being in Buffalo’s division the last four years, it’s not an easy place to play. Their fans are great. They’re a young team. They’ve got a good defense so we’ve just got to be ready and play our A-game.

(on overcoming sacks)

Sacks are going to happen and you’ve just got to figure out what I can do better as a quarterback, get rid of the ball a little bit quicker but definitely one play as a time is how you’ve got to take it. If you’re worried about that interception that happened, that sack that happened, a dropped pass, a missed throw; it just hinders your play and as a quarterback you’ve definitely have to have that mindset, let it go and worry about the next play.

JAGUARS WR JUSTIN BLACKMON

(on his thoughts on the win)

It’s a long time waiting, we’ve been waiting a longtime and I’m just happy it finally came.

(on the Jaguars ability to be in rhythm)

I think it’s everybody stepping up to the plate, (Jalen) Parmele ran well as well as (Rashad) Jennings, Marcedes (Lewis) catching the ball got us going and that opened up stuff on the outside and it makes everything a lot easier when everybody is hitting at the same time because you can’t stop everything.

(on how much more confidence he had after last week)

I don’t know if we have any more confidence. Me personally, I am more confident regardless. I think it’s just a sign that we can get out there and do it. Hopefully we come back and work hard this week and go out and get another one.

(on the play near the goal line)

It was just a little hook route. A little four-yard hook route. Put it right on the money where I could turn and brace myself for a defender coming or defenders. It made it easier on me. I just put my head down and drove forward.

JAGUARS WR CECIL SHORTS

(on the touchdown catch)

It was cover two. Coach Sullivan said at halftime that he wanted to run a certain play against cover two. It has been successful all year and we came back to it because we knew it was going to be there. Justin was open as well. He was probably more open than I was down the middle of the field. Henne threw a good ball between the back and the safety and rest was easy.

(on getting adjusted to the NFL)

I think I have a long way to go. I’m doing ok right now. There are still some things I need to work on to be where I want to be as a receiver and as a football player. So I think I’m coming along all right.

(on the big plays)

I just think that I am making the most of my opportunities. When the ball comes my way, coach always says to catch the ball first and then from there you’ll make some plays. So just catch the ball first and when the ball comes my way I try to make the most of my opportunities. I’ve done the same thing in college so it isn’t new to me it’s just new to everyone else.

(on working with Justin Blackmon)

We push each other. It is his first year and it’s my second year so we are trying to eventually be one of the best duos in the league but we have a long way to go. Justin had a great game last week so you can see his potential. I think we have a bright future.

(on the win and the feeling in the locker room)

It felt good. Before the game, coach said that if we win he would give everybody on the team a chest bump. We came in and he was out there giving everybody chest bumps. It was good to win for Jacksonville the city.

JAGUARS TE MARCEDES LEWIS

(on his thoughts on Chad Henne’s leadership)

He did a great job just as he does in practice, like I said before he always prepares like he’s the starter and today he came out and did his thing.

(on Coach Mularkey’s chest bumps after the game)

Well his mind set has always been the same. I think who he is as a person and one thing I really respect about a person is he’s the same every time, if you’re not such a good person be that way every day. If you’re a great guy or great woman be that way every day, and he is who he is every day and that’s how he’s been and that’s how we’ve been able to come out here and get a win because he’s always been consistent.

JAGUARS DB DWIGHT LOWERY

(on his thoughts after the game)

I’m feeling good after a win, but we’re just trying to manage it and we didn’t play the Super Bowl today. You’ve got to be smart and try and understand the game situation, know how to manage the things that you’re going through in those situations, and that’s what we tried to do.

(on his feelings after the game)

We work extremely hard and I wish everybody could see the hard work and dedication on both sides coaching, players on the field. So it feels like we’re trying to compete in games consistently for the past two weeks, we just need to build on it.

(on plays at end of the game)

Sometimes you really can’t stress about those things, you just have to do your job and trust the guy next to you. Usually that’s when big plays happen. There’s no real magic formula that you can come up with. It’s just playing together, understanding your job and when the play is there to be made, make it.